Tag, You're It

IBM has created new platforms to further people's ability to connect with others they might want to meet based on common interests and skills:

IBM Delivers the Next Wave of Business Social Networking: IBM ...Market Wire (press release) - USA"Social networking is the new frontier in business collaboration," said Jeff Schick, vice president of social software, IBM. "From the business-minded ...See all stories on this topic- Drawing on its experience in enterprise collaboration, IBM is expanding the tagging abilities of Lotus Connections to include people tagging. With the latest version, people can tag themselves or others based on a key topic or area of expertise. This allows individuals to instantly identify and retrieve live intellect on any given topic and tap into the collective wisdom of a larger group or pinpoint rare, niche expertise from the general population. Tag clouds are displayed on a person's profile and throughout communities, making it easy to associate people with areas of expertise.

So now - your interests are tagged, or flagged so that you can find others who share these interests or skills.
This is definitely the right direction. And on the flip side, we are revealing more and more of ourselves to our communities.

And Microsoft is testing it's own internal social network:
Microsoft testing prototype of Facebook-like social networkComputerworld - Framingham,MA,USAs Office Labs operation has created and is testing a prototype of an internal social network that can provide employees with feeds and updates about their ...See all stories on this topic.

Socianetworks are not a fad; we are looking at a trend that is here to stay. The key is: how will these networks thrive and be monetized going forward?